Once Was a Time (2 page)

Chapter 2

When my mum left us, she didn't do it with shimmery portals and time travel. She did it the old-fashioned way: with a trunk and a train and a promise to write.

She left six months ago, in April. She went to stay with her sister in Highgate.

As I watched her pack, I asked, “Why would you leave Bristol, which is at least
maybe
safe, to move into the middle of London, which is definitely
not
?” I knew that people in London were doing whatever they could to get their children out of the city, away from the bombs, the frequent air raids, the closed schools. And yet here was my mum, running right in the opposite direction. “Are you
mad
, Mummy?”

“I'm not mad, sweetheart,” Mum said, kissing the top of my head. “But I shall go mad if I stay here.”

It's not you
, she explained to Justine, Thomas, and me. But she didn't say that to Dad, because it
was
Dad. It was Dad and his obsession with discovering the secrets of time travel; that was the reason why she was leaving.

“Take us with you,” I begged, but even as I said it, I knew I didn't mean it. I didn't want to live in London. I had been there a few times, to visit Aunt Matilda, and I found it dirty and crowded and loud—and that was
before
the war even began. I didn't really like my mother's sister, either: She always called me by my full name, Charlotte, even though I'd told her a hundred times that I preferred Lottie. And I didn't want to leave Daddy, either. What did it matter if he was obsessed with time travel? It was important.
He
was
important.

Dad had signed the Official Secrets Act, so he wasn't allowed to tell us much about his time travel research, and this secrecy, I think, was part of what Mum couldn't stand. But Kitty and I paid attention, and we put things together.

We knew Dad's research at the university was funded
by the government—by the
British Armed Forces, specifically—
and we could guess that the plan was for him to work out how time travel operated, so that the military could harness it and create their own portals, which they would use for
. . .
something. Kitty thought they would go back in time to kill Hitler when he was just a baby. Stop the whole war before it even started.

If Dad could really do that—unlock the secret to time travel and thereby save all of Europe from this wretched war and its daily casualties—then there was no question in my mind that he should. That he
had
to. So what if he was in his laboratory all the time? Who could say that it wasn't worth it?

My mum, apparently. “I didn't sign on for being the wife of a mad scientist,” we overheard her say to Dad the night before she left. “We” was me, Justine, and Kitty, who was spending the night at our house. We were listening outside their bedroom door. It was the only way to find out anything around here.

“Things will get better,” we heard Dad promise.

“
When
?”
she demanded.

“When the war ends.”

“And when is that going to be?”

A moment of silence. Then Dad said, “When I find
the answer.”

Mum gave a little cry of frustration, and I pictured the two of them there on the other side of the door, standing across the room from each other like enemies on a battlefield.

“Do you have any idea how long I've wanted to have this conversation with you?” she asked. “But you haven't even been home enough for me to tell you that I'm leaving.”

The three of us silently retreated to the bedroom Justine and I shared. Justine crawled under the covers immediately and clamped her pillow down over her ears. She didn't talk to me. Kitty was the one who held me as I cried, and Kitty was the one who told me it would be all right, and it was in Kitty's arms that I at last fell asleep.

It was now six months later, and we hadn't seen Mum once. But she did write, just as she promised. Every single week. And we wrote back, or at least Thomas and I did. Justine said she couldn't be bothered. I missed our mother terribly. Maybe Dad did, too, or maybe he didn't. I couldn't tell, because Mum was right about one thing: These days, he didn't seem to care about anything except his research.

In fact, he cared so much about his research that when he disappeared in October, I didn't even notice.

* * *

Kitty's family was different from mine. If Kitty's parents had gone missing for even twenty-four hours, we would have called the police. The
McLaughlins
always had a plan. They knew where they, and Kitty, were supposed to be at every moment of the day. If Mrs. McLaughlin nipped out to buy some milk, she would leave behind at least one note, sometimes more:
Gone to the High St. Home in 20 min. Bikkies on the table if you get hungry
. As if Kitty couldn't see that there were biscuits on the table next to the note.

It was because of the McLaughlins' obsession with always having a plan that Kitty and I had come up with one for what we would do if we ever got separated by the war. We'd heard stories on the wireless about families in occupied France or Poland who were suddenly ripped apart, some of them carted off to prison camps, others who simply disappeared in the middle of the night.

England was still proud and free, but if the Nazis ever occupied our country, too, Kitty felt firmly that she and I should know how to find each other again. We'd come up with our plan just two weeks before my father's disappearance, on the night that Princess Elizabeth and
Princess Margaret delivered their first-ever national address.

Kitty and I loved both the princesses, of course. We loved Elizabeth because she was going to be queen someday, but we loved Margaret more because she was almost exactly our age. I felt a special affinity for her because I, too, was a younger sister, and I wondered if Elizabeth ever teased Margaret in the way that Justine sometimes teased me. In photographs the princesses always looked calmly pleased to be in each other's company, but I reckoned that they argued when the cameras weren't there, just like any other sisters.

We dressed up in our princess costumes the evening we listened to their address on the wireless. We both wore paper crowns salvaged from last year's Christmas crackers, and Kitty carried a scepter (a fire poker) while I wore a long robe (my mum's).

“Don't the girls look so precious?” Mrs. McLaughlin asked her husband as she tuned in to the program for us.

“Darling,” Kitty's father agreed, puffing on his pipe.

“
Regal
, Mum,” Kitty corrected her. “We look
regal
.”

I sat up straighter on my footstool. Straighter and more
regal.

The princesses were speaking on
Children's Hour
, which we listened to most every evening for the stories, but this night was special. Kitty squirmed with excitement until finally the announcer said, “Her Royal Highness, Princess Elizabeth.”

Her voice came through as clear as a bell, as if she was right there in the McLaughlins' front room with us. “In wishing you all ‘good evening,' I feel that I am speaking to friends and companions who have shared with my sister and myself many a happy
Children's Hour
.”

Kitty and I both started squealing.

“My word,” remarked Kitty's mum, “if that isn't the poshest voice I ever heard come out of a child's mouth!”

“Naturally,” Kitty said. “She's going to be the
queen
, after all.” She adjusted her crown.

“Hush,” I ordered them. “She's still speaking!”

“Thousands of you in this country have had to leave your home and be separated from your fathers and mothers,” the princess continued. “My sister, Margaret Rose, and I feel so much for you, as we know from experience what it means to be away from those we love most of all.”

I didn't even need to look at Kitty before I felt her hand close around mine. She squeezed it, and I squeezed back. I hadn't left my home, I hadn't gone anywhere at all, but I knew far too well what it meant to be apart from my loved
ones.

“And when peace comes,” the princess concluded, “remember it will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.”

I wanted to do that, so badly: to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place. And when I saw the determined look on Kitty's face as she stared at the wireless, I knew that she was vowing to do the exact same.

“Good night, children,” said Princess Margaret.

“Good night, and good luck to you all,” said Princess Elizabeth.

It was the best
Children's Hour
ever.

As soon as we turned off the radio, Kitty told me that we needed to come up with our plan to find each other if ever we were separated. It was as if hearing from the princesses had made her take this whole war business more seriously than ever she had done before. “We need to choose a meeting spot,” she declared, gesturing authoritatively with her fire poker—I mean, royal scepter.

“You're right,” I said. “What's the spot, then?”

“It ought to be somewhere we could find easily,” Kitty mused. “And somewhere we know we'd be able to get into. Not our houses, for example. What if they took over our houses when they sent us away to prison camp?”

“Wills Tower,” I suggested. Wills Memorial Tower was the grandest building at the university where my dad worked. Probably the grandest building in all of southwest England. It was made to look as if it had been built in medieval times, all vaulted ceilings and turrets raised toward the heavens. It reminded me more of a cathedral than a university.

Dad had taken me and Kitty to Wills Tower a number of times over the years. He had let us play hide-and-seek in the hallways and winding staircases while he sat in meetings. I knew we would be able to find it no matter what happened because it was right in the middle of Bristol, and it was one of the city's tallest buildings. You could see that tower from almost anywhere.

Kitty nodded her agreement, pleased. “Tell sir ‘Wow!'” she added.

I blinked at her.

“It's an anagram of ‘Wills Tower,'” Kitty explained. And that decided it.

That was how important it was, in Kitty's family, to always keep track of everyone's whereabouts.

I couldn't help but think how different my own family was. My dad often stayed at the labs so late into the night that we were asleep before he came home, and then went back there before we woke up the next morning. Some nights I don't know whether he came home at all. When that happened, Justine was supposedly “in charge,” which meant that supper was cold fish and chips from the chip shop, and sometimes boys would come round to visit her. That's just how things were in my family these days.

So I wonder: Just how long did it take me to realize that Dad was missing?

Chapter 3

Perhaps I should have noticed my father's absence days
earlier
than I did. But in my defense, school had gone from bad to worse, and there wasn't room in my mind for anything else. What happened was this: Betsy, Margaret, and Jeanine had formed a club called the Film Stars, and they were inviting other girls in our form to join and they weren't just walking up and saying, “Hey, do you fancy coming out to play with us at Margaret's this weekend?” No, there were formal invitations in fine handwriting on lovely stationery. And then if you accepted the offer of membership (which everyone did, of course), you got a Film Stars badge and a Film Stars membership card, and I even heard there was a Film Stars initiation ceremony, only none of the girls was allowed to tell what happened there because it was secret.

Let me be clear: The entire concept of the Film Stars was utterly soppy. All they did was go to the cinema together. That was it. And I could do that myself, without belonging to any sort of club. In fact I
did
do that myself. Often. With
Kitty.

So I wouldn't have been upset not to find one of those formal invitations slipped into my desk, except that Betsy, Margaret, and Jeanine made it clear that they were
never
going to invite me.

“We don't want to hurt your feelings,” Betsy said to me in the schoolyard one Friday morning in late October, “but we don't really think you would fit in. D'you know what I
mean?”

“Sort of,” I answered, clutching
A Little Princess
tighter against my chest.

“It's just that you read,” Margaret added. “A lot. And that's not really what the Film Stars is about.”

“I know,” I said. “It's about films. I like films, too.”

“Have you seen
The Wizard of Oz
?” Jeanine asked.

“No,” I said. “But I've read the book.”

They all nodded grimly, as if to say,
Exactly
.

“You know we're going to secondary school next year,” Betsy explained. “So it's time we start acting a little more grown up.”

I hadn't known that reading books was babyish.

“I can act more adult,” I offered.

“It wouldn't really help, you know,” Jeanine said in a fake-sweet voice. “The Film Stars just aren't looking for that whole ‘girls with glasses' thing.”

As if it was my fault that I needed glasses.

But still, it would have been all right, I could have dealt with it. Except that then they invited Kitty to be a Film Star.

Kitty and I sat down at our desks next to each other, and I saw her pull out the envelope, beautiful in lace and ribbons. She stuck it back in her desk really fast, as if she didn't want me to notice. But it was too late.

She didn't mention her Film Stars invitation to me the whole rest of the day, so I didn't bring it up either. She just acted like her normal Kitty self: splitting her lunch with me, distracting Miss Dickens just as she was about to shout at me (again) for reading during class, playing make-believe witches with me in the schoolyard. She behaved normally, but as soon as she got that invitation, nothing felt normal at all.

I slipped out of school as soon as the day ended, and I went home alone. From school to my house was a twenty-minute walk across the Downs, which is a vast, flat expanse of grass and basically nothing else for as far as the eye can see, except for a few barrage balloons, like Martian spacecraft suspended high up in midair, which the Royal Air Force had installed when the war started. Sometimes we would come out here to fly kites, because there were no trees or buildings to block the wind.

This day was gray and blustery and rainy, like almost every day in Bristol. I didn't mind rain as a rule, but it was so much worse when it came whipping across the Downs at an almost horizontal angle, and the wind, finding no kites to support, dedicated itself to trying to knock me over. I had an umbrella, of course, but it wouldn't stand a chance against this wind, so I stuck it in my schoolbag and just let myself get soaked through. The cardboard box holding my gas mask banged painfully against my knees as I hurried forward. If Daddy was home, he would have a fire going and maybe a cup of Ovaltine and I would dry right up. If Daddy wasn't there, well, I could always use a towel.

“Hullo!” I shouted when I walked in the front door.

“What?” Justine shouted back from upstairs. Otherwise, no response. The downstairs was dark, and there was nothing in the fireplace but cinders.

Fine. I would make
myself
a cup of Ovaltine. Betsy said it was time to start acting more grown up. But what did she know about it? Being adult had nothing to do with watching more movies. Making your own Ovaltine when you were soaking wet and friendless because there was no one there to take care of you—
that
was grown up.

I went into the larder. No milk.

I started to cry then, so I suppose Betsy was right, and I really
am
a baby. Crying over spilt milk. Or no milk, really.

I huddled down on the kitchen's filthy tile floor, which hadn't been cleaned in weeks, maybe months, maybe even not since Mum left. I pressed my forehead against my sopping wet knees and wept. I was so noisy about it that I almost didn't hear the knocking on the front door.

Slow. Slow. Fast-fast-fast-fast-fast.

That was the pattern everyone in my family used to knock on doors: when Mum wanted to come in and tidy my bedroom, or when I wanted to bother Dad in his library. Kitty had adopted it, too, although her parents had no interest in secret knocking codes.

I stood up, wiped the back of my wrist across my eyes, and went to open the door. There I found Kitty, looking like a drowned cat. She had her book bag but no gas mask, a forgetful habit for which Miss Dickens frequently reprimanded her. “Thanks a lot for waiting for me,” Kitty said.

I was so surprised to see her that I just stood there.

“Can I come in?” she asked. “I'm still getting rained on, you know.”

I let her inside and went upstairs to get towels for both of us. We sat on the living room floor together, dampening the rug. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“It's Friday,” was her explanation. “Why wouldn't I be
here?”

“What about the Film Stars?”

Kitty looked puzzled. “What about them?”

“They invited you,” I said. “I saw their letter.”

“Oh, right.” Kitty shrugged, her towel bobbing up and down on her shoulders. “I said no thanks.”

“Why?” I gasped. No one
ever
said “no thanks” to
Margaret
, Betsy, and Jeanine.

She wrinkled her nose. “Because I don't want to be a Film Star. Those girls are mean. And boring. And they didn't invite you. So it sounded like a stupid club.”

I didn't say anything because the love that I felt for Kitty, which was always part of me, like background music to my life, suddenly crescendoed into a symphony so loud and powerful that I would not have been able to speak over it had I tried.

“Did you honestly think I was going to join a club without you?” Kitty asked, her eyes wide.

I shrugged.

“Lottie, are you
daft
?”

I nodded, and we both giggled.

“Come on,” I said, standing up and heading to the
mantel.
“It's freezing in here.”

So Kitty and I built a fire, together.